Biz & IT —

Nonlethal microwave pain beam hits the market

Microwave beams, which disable people by rapidly heating their skin surface, …

Earlier in the year, we reported on a demonstration of the Department of Defense's Active Denial System, which is designed to disable hostile individuals with nonlethal force. The system, jointly developed with Raytheon, uses a focused microwave beam to rapidly heat the surface of the skin, causing pain that induces targeted individuals to seek cover. Apparently, development has gone well, because the system has made it out of the labs and into the hands of the Raytheon marketing department—they've termed it Silent Guardian™.

The marketing comes in the form of a two-page PDF touting the system's features, along with a video of the system moving into a ready state and targeting threatening individuals; video of those individuals shrieking in pain apparently didn't make the cut. The brochure proclaims that Silent Guardian "prevents injury and death" because it "fills the gap between shout and shoot" by forcing potentially hostile individuals to seek cover. It's also ready for some rough handling: "The antenna is capable of sustaining multiple bullet holes with minimum system performance degradation."

The system appears quick on the draw, going from standby to ready in two seconds and taking the same length of time to retarget. It's not exactly nimble, however, as the combination of the power converter and transmitter units weighs a bit over five tons. It's claimed to be effective at ranges up to 250 meters.

Pretty much all of the concerns raised by Dr. Gitlin in the original report, however, apply to the commercialized version. Any surface that absorbs or reflects microwaves should provide protection from the Silent Guardian. This should literally include the traditional tin-foil hat, as well as more mundane clothing and goggles.

Silent Guardian's arrival on the market, however, comes at a time which places it awkwardly in the middle of two ongoing debates. The potentially excessive use of force by private security forces in Iraq would seem to make nonlethal crowd control a desirable option. But, if some guards are already trigger-happy, the reduced consequences of using something like Silent Guardian might encourage an excessive reliance on random acts of pain infliction.

Meanwhile, the leaking of classified memos has revealed that US intelligence officers may currently be allowed to inflict nonlethal pain that is arguably torturous as part of interrogation procedures, a situation that Silent Guardian or its relatives would appear made for. Overall, it looks like the product has hit the marketplace just in time to complicate a number of already unsettled debates.